To put things short, the overall situation wasn't looking good. By now the constant barrage of arrows and bullets from the defenders had left behind a tremendous number of dead goblins on the ground with demolished corpses being added on top of those by Manald's actions, but it was obvious to everyone that just more and more kept coming. The lycan had no idea what was happening behind him on the wall and he simply had no time to deal with any siege ladders from his position on the ground as well. Most importantly however the two trolls appeared to be next to unstoppable as even punching right into their flesh only had very temporary effect.

The werewolf thought about his options: Trying to bite his way through just anywhere and dealing as much damage as possible was bound to be not a good idea, simply because there was too much armor to crack through beforehand. Hoping that some skilled marksmen would put a few projectils into the beast's head and end its life this way sounded like a good and easy to execute plan at first, but what if the trolls would have reached and broken the gate before that happened ? And what if their skulls were too thick for anything to get through with enough impact ? Maybe the defenders could stack up some explosies behind the gate, wait for the trolls to break through and then blow them up ? If executed with enough haste this might work and maybe even the stream of goblins could be halted as they had to crawl through a crater afterwards, but again this was risky and there was no way to explain this plan to those 30 feet upwards in this mess in the first place.

Yet there was one weak spot on those trolls where rigid armor could impossibly be in place, neither on top nor underneath the skin, simply because flexibility was needed: the throat. Human ingenuity had developed a number of measures against attacks there: Chain mail, large spauldrons with additional, more vertically attached plates to defend against various weapons, shields... But had anything of this been designed with the intelligence and capabilities of a predator just jumping at oneself in mind ? Definitely not. The 'only' troublesome thing was that big, nasty axe that he'd need to avoid at all cost.

Manald reached for one of the dead goblins shot by the defenders. Unlike those killed by himself these still contained the vast majority of their bodily fluids and that was what he needed along with some means to deliver momentum over some distance. He used his claws to punch a bunch of additional holes into the body, then aimed for the axe-troll's head. He threw the goblin as hard as he could, but of course this was no real threat to this kind of foe at all. The impact merely stunned the troll briefly, but it also covered its face in a large amount of blood and thereby impaired its vision until it could use its hand to clear things up again.

Manald had not even waited for the impact to happen, but had started running right after throwing. As the troll was trying to stop things from flowing downwards from his forehead into his eyes, Manald jumped and opened his maw to welcome all the nerves and blood vessels he intended to sever. The crash caused the troll to topple over backwards, but Manald didn't let go but instead tried to dig his deeth as deep as possible into his prey. So... if one destroyed a troll's brain, would even that regrow ? And if so would it regrow including all the knowledge and experience gained over a lifetime or would it regrow as an empty book, reverting its host into the state of utter infancy ?

The lycan was not looking forward to the prospect of oversized troll babies crying for mommy on the battlefield, so he kept digging and tearing until he could feel the hard surface of a spine. In an attempt to defend against any troll axe coming in from behind, he decided to put his feet onto the trolls arms so to pin them down with his weight. Then there it was, finally, that satisfying cracking sound that hopefully would put an end to this monstrosity.

Yet at the same time Manald could feel something else... a sharp pain running through his back. He did not know what it was and could only suspect a goblin, but the reality was a little different: When one was so focused on something and filled to the brim with adrenaline, time seemed to slow down in one's perception as one's reflexes sped up. Manald had not paid much attention to how fast his attack actually happened to any outstanding observer and thus how little to no advance warning it had provided to anyone fighting for his own side as well. He had quite literally charged into the tunnel vision of one of the defenders who had indeed aimed for the troll's head with his trigger finger already moving.

And of course there was a hammer troll still on the move towards the gate...